With increasing population of people and manufactured products there is an ever increasing amount of waste product. There is also increasing awareness of the need for protection of the environment and in many cases, cleaning up of waste dumps already in existence.
This present invention covers a simplified process for catalytic decomposition and pyrolysis of hazardous wastes in a closed system to form saleable products in the form of activated carbon and metal alloy ingots containing various impurities. These ingots may be sold back to processors of aluminum or steel and are considered a very high grade one.
This invention is uniquely different in simplicity and in using tailor-made alloys to decompose hazardous materials and to tie up simple and complex anions as saleable metallic salts while recovering carbon as carbon black from complete decomposition of the organic molecules. Such hazardous chemicals as polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) and trichloroethylene, and insecticides have been completely destroyed using this process.
We have considered the following patents in the prior art:
______________________________________ Patent No. Inventor Date ______________________________________ 4,552,667 C. G. Shultz 11/12/1985 4,666,696 C. G. Shultz 5/19/1987 4,526,677 Leroy F. Grantham et al 7/2/1985 4,497,782 Samuel G. Howell et al 2/5/1985 4,592,844 Robert G. Layman et al 6/3/1986 4,601,817 Alfred R. Globus 7/22/1986 4,581,130 Alfred R. Globus 4/8/1986 4,547,620 Shigeo Miyata et al 10/15/1985 ______________________________________
The patent to Shultz entitled Destruction of Nerve Gases and other Cholinesterase Inhibitors by Molten Metal Reduction is the closest prior art but differs quite markedly in at least the following major aspects:
1. Schultz uses a molten aluminum bed whereas this invention normally will use a molten alloy containing aluminum, copper, iron, zinc, and calcium or equivalent metals with the alloy being chosen to decompose a variety of hazardous wastes; PA1 2. We use a platinum-palladium screen to catalyze the reactions whereas Shultz does not; PA1 3. In our invention the hydrocarbon portion of the molecules are completely disintegrated whereas Shultz does not completely disintegrate the molecules and suggests using such compounds as lower alkenes in the off gas as fuels; PA1 4. The molten alloy bed we use is designed to decompose a wide variety of compounds in addition to cholinesterose inhibitor agents such as nerve gas agents and insecticides; PA1 5. The use of induction heating along with platinum catalysis may account for the fact that hydrocarbons are completely broken down in our process but not in the Shultz process.